You
by Elise May
Summary: That must just be the magic that is me.
1. Chapter 1

_A strong T. This is quite different from anything I have ever written before in terms of style. Do let me know if you like it! I needed to let my anger out in some way, so..._

* * *

 **You**

* * *

Your head is fucked. Absolutely fucked. You can't think, you can't breathe. You were drunk. _It's the drink._ Honestly, it's fine. Because that wasn't you. That's not who you are. You don't do things like that. Why would you? How could you? You're not that person, right?

Right?

No, wrong. It's all so wrong. And you smash your head against cold glass, mirrored glass. You're staring at yourself from all angles and features you'd once have said you liked about yourself you are now beginning to hate. You've got Johnny Connor's nose. Your lips and your hair, they don't feel like yours. They've been touched and messed with and tainted by a stranger and it hits you all at once and you're left gasping for air. The worst part of it all is that you're everywhere. You can't escape yourself. You're in front, you're behind; one way, the other. In fact, that's a lie. _He_ is. Robert fucking is. He is everywhere.

On your skin and in your head and so far from your heart, you feel like smashing your reflection just to rid yourself of having to look at the emptiness of your eyes you have no one to blame for but yourself.

Your chest burns with so much anger, it is a physical ache. The lift opens and you drag yourself out of it and you're outside the casino you know you can never return to, hailing a taxi, and everything sounds so loud. Your senses are heightened. You feel so sensitive and fragile and you know for a fact that if anyone were to touch you, you'd crumble. But you can't crumble.

You're not home yet. You can't go home. Home won't want you, home will hate you, you've broken your own home and your own heart and your phone is in your hand. Your phone, with its nineteen missed calls and its countless number of text messages. And it's Nick and it's Michelle and you wanted them to go to hell. You told them to go to hell. _Go to hell, the lot of you._

You think you know what hell feels like. Hell is in your own head. You think you know how it burns from the inside out and your eyes, they burn, and you have so much tension in your arms and your hands and in your fingers that opening the cab door is a struggle.

The leather seat you throw yourself onto is freezing. It actually shocks you because you're so, so warm. And your head is in your hands and you disgust yourself because you are sweating and now you're shaking and you want to cry. The taxi driver knows this, so he discreetly looks away, but you don't cry. You can't cry. You clam up and you claw at your thigh and your skin, your neck, it feels red raw.

Raw.

That's exactly what you are.

You exhale deeply for a long moment and you're surprised at how your heartbeat still hasn't calmed down from when you climaxed. You actually climaxed. You remember screaming, screaming with pleasure; your throat remembers. It's why you're having such difficultly swallowing. But you need to swallow. You may be sick otherwise. Your stomach certainly feels it and it's turning and turning, just like your head, just like this taxi down seedy streets, outside seedy hotels filled with seedy people. No morals, no thought for others. Everything is a mess and a blur and your phone vibrates on the seat beside you and his name hits you so fucking hard, you actually let out a little whimper.

 _Nick calling..._

You reject the call like you rejected him, rejected his comfort and you know that your running out of the room with the haste that you did will never excuse your running into it in the first place. You ran your mouth off when Nick was only trying to help and you did exactly what you told yourself you wouldn't. You ran from your problems directly into more of your problems and created more problems. Problems you will never be able to solve.

And it's just one problem. And then another. And another. And you're drowning in them and as you shower and you scrub and you finally let yourself sob to the point where you actually give yourself a headache that bangs, imagined conversations you never in your life thought you would have with Nick, _your Nicky_ , enter your mind and they don't leave it either.

 _I'll kill him._

 _And what about me? Will you kill me n'all?_

 _I —_

 _I wanted this. I wanted it. I wanted him, but I want you. I want you, I want you, I want you..._

 _I want_ doesn't get.

* * *

You make it home late, the two of you. You and your guilt; he and his remorse. He's sorry. He's fucking sorry and he won't stop saying it and you can't stop feeling it. And when you enter the flat, the first thing you are met with is your soiled clothes at your feet you ripped from your own body this time, clothes which clung to you and stuck to you in a way that made you feel so dirty, in a way that reminded you of how Robert did the same, you had to tear them from yourself the minute you entered what was once your safe haven after so long of such a place not existing.

You actually think you're going to heave when Nick drops your hand to pick them up. He takes them to the bathroom, puts them into the laundry basket. _How domestic._ All thoughts of binning them are gone just like that and you only have your carelessness to blame.

Carelessness is what's put you in this position in the first place.

You don't sleep. You can't sleep. You don't leave for the sofa, you don't let him throw a throw over you; you just don't leave him. You lie next to him in his oblivious state, beneath the covers rather than fucking on top, and the way he'd offered to let you have the bed all to yourself, to spare you (fucking spare you) his snores makes your heart physically ache with love for him. So much love you wonder why earlier it didn't feel like enough.

He is holding your hand. But you know he wanted to hold you. He wanted to stroke your hair and kiss your lips and entwine your legs with his, not knowing where he ended and you began. He wanted to make up for being shit. Apparently, Nick was shit when Nick was only confused, only lost, only trying to help the unhelpable.

Because you are beyond help.

You are _I'm sorry_. You are _we can make this work_. You are _destroying you would destroy me and I don't think I can do this alone_.

You are selfish.

And do you know what you are? Do you know what hurts the most?

You are desperately, hopelessly, irrevocably in love.


	2. Chapter 2

_This was only supposed to be one chapter, but I couldn't help myself. Also, happy birthday, Jade! This is for you._

* * *

 **You**

* * *

It is your birthday. It is 41 years and nine months since Johnny Connor shagged your mother in the back of his 1975 Vauxhall Cavalier and you wake up to Nick kissing your neck, telling you he loves you and that he will only mention it's your birthday if you want him to.

He doesn't want to upset you. If only you would stop upsetting yourself.

You have sex. Awful, terrible sex. You forget how to do it. You forget how it works, how you work together. You're all fingers and thumbs and as he undresses you, you just feel sick. He stares into your eyes and he is kissing you and you are kissing him and keeping your eyes closed is an actual difficulty for if you can't see him, how can you know it is him you are feeling? How can you know it is him who is feeling you?

You can't get him out of your head. Robert. You can't forget his hands or his breath or the way he felt around you. You can't forget any of it and all you know is that it's time for you to stop lying to yourself. Because you were sober. Not completely, not like when regrets were pointless and there was only one thing wrong with Erica and you weren't her and _fuck_.

 _Fuck_.

You fall apart in Nick's arms. In them; not out of them. And he holds you. He doesn't tell you _I won't be a minute_ , doesn't disappear to the bathroom to clean himself up, leaving you cold and naked and dirty on top of crumbled bedsheets. He kisses your cheek. He whispers _happy birthday, baby_. He doesn't tell you how bad that was. He knows you don't need telling.

And you don't quite remember how it happens, but you suddenly move to be on top of him and you are clawing at him. You want to feel something, anything, you want your heart to race because you are alive. You want to feel alive, but you're dead inside and using his body just to make yours feel better only makes you feel worse.

You can't eat.

Roy buys you the most beautiful diary. _2016 will be your year_ is the promise he writes inside it and a single tear escapes you as he looks at you with expectant eyes, not knowing eyes. You text Michelle in the morning, telling her you don't want to celebrate, don't want to acknowledge your own existence. She says she understands. She asks how you are feeling.

You don't reply.

What you are feeling cannot be put into words.

You spend the day with Nick. Sweet Nick with his arms that don't leave you, with his head he keeps pressed to yours. You veg out in front of the telly where you try and fail to forget how if you'd have done this when he suggested it, none of this would be happening. None of this would be happening at all.

The later it gets, the older you begin to feel. You're 41, but you feel fifty, sixty, seventy. You don't feel your age; you feel exhausted. You feel like you've lived too long, but done too little. Too many people have entered your life and left without one of their own.

You look at Nick, chuckling softly at the shit he's watching you're not paying attention to, and it hurts. Because his life is in your hands now and you've already proved to yourself that it's too heavy a life for you to carry with one hand. You cut the other off the second you let it touch Robert.

"I love you," you tell him. You don't tell him enough.

"I love you more," he says.

And you don't deny it and it terrifies you. Because what you feel is so intense, you wonder how much more love a heart can actually hold. But he must love you more. He does love you more. More than anything. He'd never trade everything for nothing. You mean more to him than that.

The truth will kill him if the lies don't kill you first.

"You're perfect," he says.

You shake your head.

 _No_ , you think. _You are._


End file.
